Chapter Twenty-Two #2
She liked to provide some sort of treat for the volunteers who gave up their Saturday afternoons for LonStar.
Usually they had to make do with shop biscuits or cake, from the bakery opposite if she was feeling extravagant—which wasn’t really “making do,” she reflected, as the bakery’s products were excellent and her home-made often were not—otherwise ordinary packaged stuff.
However, Mr Scumble and Nick had between them demolished the entire packet of chocolate digestives, and Eleanor had been too busy this morning to get to the shops before they closed.
Only tourist-oriented shops, such as Nick’s gallery and Brian and Mavis’s Ye Olde Cornysh Piskie Curio Shoppe, stayed open on Saturday afternoons. Jocelyn had decided LonStar qualified, though many of their customers were local people.
Hence, Eleanor had been baking for the volunteers.
Shortbread sounded easy enough. Only four ingredients, and Jocelyn had said she didn’t really need to use rice flour, which she didn’t have.
She had just increased the amount of ordinary flour instead.
Not self-raising, Jocelyn had stressed, and it must be butter; marge wouldn’t do.
Castor sugar, not ordinary gran, she’d done that.
So why was her table covered with broken bits that couldn’t possibly be offered to the volunteers?
Something to do with the way she had turned it out of the pans onto the racks, perhaps, or perhaps she had kneaded too little. Or too much.
With a sigh she put one of the smaller fragments into her mouth. It was delicious! Suppose she took the large bits and cut them into neater shapes—
The phone rang. Her fingers sticky, Eleanor grabbed a tea-towel to pick up the receiver and gave her number, a bit indistinctly through the crumbs. The phone beeped and she heard the clink of coins.
“Aunt Nell?”
“Megan, dear. Don’t tell me Mr Scumble has thought up a whole new lot of questions for me!”
“No, this is nothing to do with . . . At least, it is, sort of. I’ve sort of landed myself with a witness—”
“Megan, so far I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Am I being very dense?”
“Not at all, Aunt Nell. It’s sort of hard to explain because Mr Scumble’ll kill me if I tell you too much, but the end result is that I have a young girl on my hands who has no money and not even a toothbrush.
I’m hoping to persuade the inspector to give her funds from petty cash for that and a nightie at least, but the shops are shut.
And she has nowhere to stay. I’d take her home, even though I’ve only got the bedsitter, but I’m going to be working tomorrow and I simply can’t leave her on her own. ”
“Of course she must come here, dear, at least till Tuesday. I probably have an extra toothbrush somewhere, or Jocelyn will, and I certainly have a clean nightdress. I hope it fits. Or we can always get one from downstairs.”
“I can really bring her to you?”
“But only till Tuesday. I must go to the Scilly Islands on Tuesday, come what may. I do hope you won’t feel obliged to tell Mr Scumble, because he’d have to arrest me to stop me.”
“This is a very bad line. I’m ringing from a public box. The only thing I heard is that I can bring Camilla to stay with you. The rest we’ll have to sort out when I see you. Thanks, Aunt Nell, you’re an angel. We’ll be there about six, I hope.”
Thoughtfully, Eleanor popped another broken bit into her mouth. She tidied up the larger pieces, arranged them on a plate, and went downstairs, leaving Teazle staring up hopefully at the counter.
In the stockroom, she found four women and one elderly gentleman.
Only one was a regular volunteer. The others she knew only to say “Good morning” to in the street.
She was fairly certain they didn’t appear on Jocelyn’s roster.
Mrs Davies must have recruited a troop of irregulars to make quite sure she didn’t have to enter the haunted stockroom herself.
Jocelyn would be furious if she found out.
Ought Eleanor to tell her? Though, obviously, it was important that only trustworthy people work in the shop, these were surely all members of the faithful flock at the chapel—which wouldn’t endear them to the vicar’s wife but guaranteed their respectability as far as the minister’s wife was concerned.
They did seem to have done a good deal of sorting, tidying, and cleaning, and one was busy ironing clothes.
What Jocelyn didn’t know couldn’t upset her. Eleanor decided to have a quiet word with Mrs Davies later, pointing out that as Jocelyn bore ultimate responsibility for the shop, it really wasn’t fair to bring new people in without consulting her.
In the meantime, the irregulars were delighted with the shortbread, “so original to shape them like crazy paving,” instead of the usual rectangles or triangles. Someone went to put on the electric kettle and the one regular among them invited Eleanor to join them for a cup of tea.
“Sorry, I can’t. I’m expecting an unexpected guest, if you see what I mean, and I have to get things ready. Just leave the plate on the table here and I’ll fetch it later.”
She went upstairs. Teazle was in exactly the same position, staring hopefully, nose twitching, so Eleanor put some crumbs in her dish. “Not too much, or you’ll get fat, my girl.”
Considering the debris, she ate another scrap herself.
A witness, she thought, a young girl with no money, no luggage, nowhere to go, she probably wouldn’t turn up her nose at fresh shortbread just because it wasn’t beautiful.
The pieces big enough to pick up went into a cake tin, and Eleanor tossed the crumbs out of the back window for the birds.
No luggage, no toothbrush—better ring Jocelyn. Surely she must be home by now from lunch with the bishop in Truro.
Jocelyn had just walked in the door as her phone was ringing. “A witness?” she asked, intrigued. “Witness to what?”
“I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure Megan won’t tell me.”
“She can’t have been in the storeroom when the boy was killed. They couldn’t be sure she didn’t do it, and Megan would never land you with a possible murderer. All the same, I’d better come over and—”
“No, Joce. You’d never be able to resist interrogating her, and I’m sure Megan will have told her she’s not to answer any questions. It wouldn’t be fair. I just rang to ask if you happen to have a spare toothbrush you could let me have for her.”
“A toothbrush! She really has nothing at all? Well, it all sounds very odd to me, but yes, I’ve got a toothbrush you can have. I always keep a spare because Timothy occasionally uses his to clean out the fiddly parts of the Vespa. Are you quite sure you wouldn’t like me to—”
“Quite sure,” Eleanor said firmly. “If Megan’s bringing her here, she must be all right. I’ll be up in a couple of minutes for the toothbrush.”
As she put on her jacket and found the dog’s lead, she reflected on the fact that her notion of an “all right” person was probably quite different from Jocelyn’s.
Life was so much simpler if one took people as they came.
All the same, she hoped Megan would be able to give her at least a hint as to why her guest had no possessions and no home.